


The Shortest-Lived Stars

by twitchtipthegnawer



Series: Meteorites [1]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Aliens, Fireworks, Fluff and Angst, Fourth of July, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, it's still the fourth cause i haven't slept yet lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 18:06:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4272930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As Lapis understands it, tonight is a special night for the humans. They were celebrating some ancient victory, not unlike festivals she remembered from homeworld, commemorating recently conquered planets, and the gems who gave their lives for the glory of their race. Wandering through the brightly lit stalls and thriving crowds of people is surreal, reminding her so much of that long ago time, and yet so alien; the humans have made treats, meat on sticks coated in fried dough, sugar spun spider-web thin and light as a cloud, except she can’t feel any water in it. Steven smiles again when he catches her eyeing the treats, though Lapis doubts he ever stopped smiling for real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Shortest-Lived Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Tumblr user starwaia requested happy Lapis after I tortured her in my Malachite fic, and I figured hey, that seems fair considering what she's going through, the poor baby. So here she goes, happy beach episode! Feat. fireworks.

Lapis tugs on the hem of her skirt, giving Steven a look out of the corner of her eye. “Are you absolutely certain the humans won’t be put off by my presence?” She asks, hair moving subtly as if in an ocean current only she could feel.

The smile Steven gives her is wide and sincere, like all his smiles, so full of sunlight she could feel it dipping into the deepest trenches of her gem. She smiles back, almost on reflex, and barely registers his reassuring “Of course not! They’re used to the crystal gems and me, they won’t be bothered by you!” With that he takes her hand, leading her towards the beach, which is lit up in a hundred multicolored lights, like a nebula full of baby stars.

As Lapis understands it, tonight is a special night for the humans. They were celebrating some ancient victory, not unlike festivals she remembered from homeworld, commemorating recently conquered planets, and the gems who gave their lives for the glory of their race. Wandering through the brightly lit stalls and thriving crowds of people is surreal, reminding her so much of that long ago time, and yet so alien; the humans have made treats, meat on sticks coated in fried dough, sugar spun spider-web thin and light as a cloud, except she can’t feel any water in it. Steven smiles again when he catches her eyeing the treats, though Lapis doubts he ever stopped smiling for real.

“Would you like some?” he offers his own fluffy sweet, already picked down to half the size it has been. Lapis hesitates a moment before she takes it, remembering the way Pearl shudders at the memory of eating, but all the same she takes a pinch and pulls it free, placing it on her tongue gingerly. It dissolves in seconds, pure sugar becoming droplets in her mouth that aren’t disgusting at all to swallow. “Is it good?” The glow on Steven’s face says he already thinks he knows the answer, but he still asks. Lapis’ chest aches with how much he cares.

“Yeah,” she tries not to let her voice sound strangled, and only manages because a smile is curling her own lips now, still tasting sweet in the back of her throat. “It was. I wouldn’t mind some, ah, cotton candy of my own.” Steven is so eager to get it for her that he stumbles into the little blonde human on the way there and nearly dumps them both onto their rear ends on the sand.

A flash of movement out of the corner of her eye draws Lapis’ attention away as soon as she’s certain that Steven was not, in fact, in danger of hurting himself. She finds herself looking at a dance, a small knot of humans gathered around a speaker and rocking their bodies, all of them slightly out of beat and grinning from ear to ear. If this had been a gem festival their corner would be lit beautifully, yellows and blues, reds and purples fading together into the white of love, romantic and platonic both. But this was not a gem celebration, not her home, and so their eyes glint with nothing more than the twinkling lights that were already strung up everywhere, illumination haphazard and not nearly as bright as Lapis seems to instinctually expect.

All at once the illumination _was_ what she expected, and a moment later it was followed by a sound like space ripping, like teleportation gone wrong, like thunder before the storm hits or gunshots that didn’t hit their target. If it wasn’t for the color of the flash of light, the bright green of the little fish she used to play with so many years ago, bright and small and beautiful, Lapis would be tensing and diving for Steven, looking for cover. As it is she flinches away from it, snaps her head up to stare in trepidation as another bright burst of sparks blooms high in the sky, this time lovely deep blue like coral under moonlit water.

“Oh!” Steven exclaims, voice oddly muted after the booming echoes of the explosions. “The fireworks already started!” Lapis casts a doubtful moue at the sky, wondering briefly if it was truly safe having such explosions so close to the helplessly mortal humans, but they all seem to be delighted, milling around her with renewed energy as they search for the best vantage point to watch more rockets send up streamers of smoke before shattering into short-lived fire flowers. 

Gentle tugging on her wrist has Lapis looking down again, watching the rainbow light flash over Steven’s face instead of the stars. “Don’t you like them?” He asks, a little nervous tinge on the edge of his laughter. “They’re pretty cool, right?” Lapis wonders for a moment if he’s looking for her to confirm that they are, in fact cool, and then realizes a beat too late that no, he just wants to make sure she’s happy again, he’s just trying to take care of her the same way he tries to take care of everyone.

Lapis’ lips curl softly before she can think to make them, and if a thoughtless smile isn’t a special gift Steven has given her she isn’t sure what is. “Of course,” she says, taking his hand in hers properly, comforting him with almost the same words he used to comfort her earlier. “I wonder what they have to do with the celebration, though.” Watching Steven’s face suddenly crumple in thought is amusing enough that Lapis doesn’t even care if she gets an answer.

It is strange, to think that the child trying so hard to take care of her is being cared for by those who enslaved her for so long. Stranger still to think of him as holding the soul of a hundreds of thousands of years old soldier. Perhaps not as strange knowing what he and the humans have said about her, about the way she loved everything and everyone, regardless of who they were. Lapis hadn’t believed it at first, but now, looking at Steven, she thinks she might have to change her mind.


End file.
